04/21/2026: Possession

In the blink of an eye, Fekre is gone.

One moment she stands before them — tattered gown, closed eyes, the wire crown pressed into pale skin — and then she simply isn't. The amber light reflects against their armor, indifferent. The air feels the same. No one moves.

The one who receives the Goddess does not twitch. Does not blink. Stands very, very still for just a breath too long — and then smiles.

"Very good," the voice purrs, from somewhere behind their eyes. "After we retrieve the ritual you need, you will bring me to Vallaki."

"Do you know where the ritual is?" the vessel asks, inside their own mind.

"Yes," Fekre whispers back. "I can find it for us."

⚔

The party looks at one another.

No one says anything for a moment. Then everyone says something at once.

The debate that follows is not orderly. Crystal and Zilk emerge as the primary suspects almost immediately — the logic shifts and doubles back, accusations softening into suspicion and suspicion sharpening back into accusation. Before long the group agrees they need to better understand the nature of the possession: does it affect memory? Physical appearance? Does the host know? Nobody thought to ask when Fekre was still standing in front of them, which is exactly the sort of oversight that feels obvious in retrospect.

They examine one another. Peer at faces. Look for something wrong in the eyes. Find nothing definitive. The amber walls offer no answers.

They eye each other with a new and particular wariness.

Shifty raises his hand. He can cast Detect Good and Evil — it ought to reveal something. The group agrees. He closes his eyes, murmurs the incantation, and a pale blue light blooms outward from him, washing over the stone floor and the faces of his companions in cold, quiet waves.

The results are not clean. A faint pulse of evil registers from four of them: Nike, Zilk, Ratrick, and Soulfire. Shifty frowns at this. Four is not a useful number.

He suggests they spread out — more distance between them might allow for a finer reading. Only Ratrick can be eliminated with any confidence, and the ratling goes to stand beside Ilya without being asked. The boy slips his small hand into his adopted father's paw, quiet and trusting, and Ratrick holds it without comment.

The debate resumes. Suspicion flows toward Soulfire, then Zilk, then Nike, then back again. It is not a productive conversation.

Then Zilk tilts his head. "We're placing a great deal of trust in Shifty," he observes, with the measured calm of someone raising a point rather than making an accusation. "Who may or may not be telling the truth about what he detected."

Shifty's eyes narrow.

"Maybe," Nike suggests, with a lightness that doesn't quite reach her eyes, "we should consider killing the main suspects. Just to be thorough."

No one is enthusiastic about this.

"If you're including me in that list," Shifty says flatly, "you'd be losing your cleric."

"My money's on Soulfire," Nike announces, ignoring him.

Ratrick watches the exchange for a moment, then glances down at Biblo, who is radiating the particular energy of someone who feels personally wronged by the entire situation. "He's too disappointed that he's not getting the things Fekre promised him," he says. "She offered each of us something remarkable. Biblo's sulking. That's not possession, that's just Biblo." He squeezes Ilya's hand. The boy looks up at him and smiles.

Soulfire, who has been watching all of this with visible amusement, raises her hand. "It might have been me," she announces cheerfully, "chosen by Fekre!"

She is the newest among them, the least known. The group stares at her, trying to gauge how serious she is. A beat passes.

"Or maybe it's Nike," Soulfire adds, grinning wider.

Nike protests this with considerable energy, and proceeds to construct a case for why each individual party member might be the one possessed — a process that generates heat but very little light.

Ilya's pale face creases with concern. He watches the back-and-forth among the adults with the baffled focus of a child trying to follow a conversation conducted mostly in implication. "Papa," he says quietly, tugging at Ratrick's sleeve, "why is Nike accusing everyone?"

"We need a way to eliminate people from suspicion," Ratrick tells him. Then, louder: "Shifty — didn't the lich give you a bottle of ink? The kind that only writes the truth?"

Soulfire blinks. "I don't know how to write," she says.

"I'll go first," Nike offers immediately, "and you can copy mine."

Soulfire agrees to try. Shifty produces the Ink of True Witness from his pack, sharpens a quill, and smooths a piece of parchment across the cold stone floor. One by one, they kneel and write.

I do not have Fekre within me, and the hand that writes this is not possessed.

Crystal writes it first. The others follow, each in their turn, some version of the same declaration.

The possessed one is careful. Very careful. They write only that their hand is not possessed — technically, entirely true — and say nothing at all about the rest of themselves. The ink accepts this without protest. No one in the group seems to notice the precision of the wording.

Crystal exhales. "All right," she says, scanning the parchment. "It looks like none of us are possessed. Maybe Fekre got bored and moved on."

"Or," Zilk says, "it's the wolf."

"It is NOT Pine Cone!" Soulfire is on her feet before the sentence is finished, crossing the black marble floor to drop into a crouch beside the wolf and throw her arms around its neck. Pine Cone receives this calmly, as wolves do.

Ilya watches the whole spectacle, arms crossed. "Well," he mutters, with the withering pragmatism of someone who has just watched a group of adventurers spend half an hour accusing each other and a wolf and arrive at no conclusion whatsoever, "at least you all know each other a bit better."

Zilk is already looking toward the stairs. "Let's go see if we can find the ritual ourselves. Who's coming?"

He, Ratrick, and Ilya head up toward the Great Library, their footsteps climbing into the dark above.

⚔

Biblo starts after them — and then doesn't.

Something stops him at the base of the stairs. A sound. Heavy, rhythmic. The slow, deliberate tread of footsteps from somewhere above, in the gallery where the darkness is thickest and the torchlight doesn't reach. He stands very still and listens. The gallery looks empty. It sounds occupied.

His hand drops to the hilt of his Flame Tongue Trident.

⚔

Crystal, Soulfire, and Nike take the eastern passage off the Great Hall. The amber walls catch the flicker of their torches and throw it back at them, warped and golden, the light never quite settling. Their boots ring against the marble, echoing into the temple's deep recesses long after each step.

The northern end of the side corridor is blocked — roof collapsed, a rubble of pale stone heaped to the ceiling, the path beyond impossible. To the south, four doors. Three closed. One stands open.

They peer through the open door. Nothing moves in the dark inside. Cautiously, they enter.

The room is domed, the ceiling lost in shadow. Three amber blocks rise from the floor, each taller than a person, their surfaces slick-looking, almost oily. The air carries a sharp, unpleasant smell — some thick spice, acrid at the back of the throat. Crystal examines the blocks closely and finds that two of them contain something at their centre: a long red shard, faintly luminous, suspended in the amber like an insect in resin. The third block has been broken open. A chisel and hammer lie abandoned among the scattered fragments on the floor, the amber around the break dark and jagged.

"Bring the torch closer," Crystal says, wanting more light.

Soulfire conjures a cluster of Dancing Lights instead, and the domed room fills with a cold, clean glow.

Nike, finding nothing immediately interesting, picks up the hammer and chisel from the floor and moves to one of the intact blocks. She sets the chisel point against the amber, lines up the hammer —

A foul smell hisses from the contact point. The stone seems to recoil.

Then a flash of sickly yellow light, and something enormous is standing directly beside her.

It has the shape of a hill giant — broad, filthy, stinking — but two heads, both of them roaring, both of them glaring at Nike with coordinated fury. The sounds fill the domed room like a physical force.

Nike shrieks. The tools hit the floor. She is out the door and slamming it behind her before the echo of her own scream has finished bouncing off the walls.

Inside the chamber, Soulfire and Crystal spin — and find the creature extremely close.

"An ettin!" Soulfire shouts, already moving. She and Crystal are through the door and slamming it shut before either head has finished roaring. Behind the door, something bellows — then, after a moment, goes quiet. It does not follow.

They stand in the corridor, breathing hard. Nike is already looking at the next door.

She opens it.

A nothic lunges out before she can react — ancient, hunched, dressed in the tattered remains of priestly vestments, its single enormous eye fixed on her with an intensity that feels uncomfortably like recognition. One clawed hand shoots out and touches her cheek before she can pull away.

Nike shudders — and her mind floods.

The Amber Temple, but different. Lit. Warm. Full of people moving with purpose — priests and monks working elbow to elbow in the quiet industry of a functioning institution, carrying scrolls, cataloguing magical texts, maintaining the vast library with the careful attention of people who believe in what they're preserving. It is peaceful. Nike realizes that she is staring into an Amber Temple from long ago, one that no longer exists.

The vision breaks. Nike shoves the creature hard, swings at it, misses.

The nothic makes a noise that might be anger, or surprise, or something more complicated. Then a single tear tracks down from its great eye — and a beam of green-black light follows, necrotic energy rotting a wide swath through Nike's cloak as she backs away.

Crystal and Soulfire note, quietly, to themselves, that this is the second time in five minutes that Nike has opened something and immediately regretted it.